Rebbetzin Chaya Bluma Hellman A’H

(Gili Yaari/Flash90)

 

Rebbetzin Chaya Bluma Hellman, a”h, wife of Harav Uri Hellman, zt”l, the longtime Menahel of Bais Yaakov High School, passed away on Thursday 9 Adar I. She is remembered as a woman who embodied the high ideals of ahavas haTorah, chessed and yiras Shamayim with which she had been raised.

With palpable simchas hachaim and steadfast emunah, she epitomized the eishes chaver, whose primary goal was to facilitate her husband’s growth in Torah and avodah.

The Rebbetzin was born in 1921 in Minsk, where the family had fled during the First World War. Her father, Harav Nachum Sher, Hy”d, was a talmid of the famed Volozhiner Yeshivah and was known as a great gaon, renowned for his outstanding hasmadah. Her mother, Rebbetzin Necha, Hy”d, was also descended from generations of talmidei chachamim.

For most of her youth, the Shers lived in Doig, a town near Kovna, where her father served as Rav. In addition to the unique chinuch that she merited to absorb from her parents, young Chaya Bluma attended the Yavneh Seminary, one of the early formal institutions for chinuch habanos.

Soon before the Second World War reached Lithuania, the Rebbetzin became engaged to Harav Uri Hellman, a bachur who had left behind the comfortable life of his native Germany to study Torah in the Mirrer Yeshivah. However, the Nazi invasion delayed their marriage, which would eventually take place in Shanghai where both of them had fled.

Despite suffering from deprivation and recurring illness while in Shanghai, the Rebbetzin began her long career of chessed. The Hellman home was open to all those in need, and remained so for all of her life.

Soon after their arrival in America, following the war’s conclusion, the family settled in Williamsburg, where Rav Hellman began to work at the Bais Yaakov of Williamsburg under the direction of Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan, a”h. Quickly displaying his mastery as a mechanech, he rose to an administrative position and in the early 1960s moved to Boro Park where he became Menahel of the mosad’s new branch.

Those who were privileged to know her recalled the Rebbetzin as a woman whose essence was defined by her deeply rooted emunah. Even as a young mother, her siddur was typically open form morning until evening, using what time she could for tefillos and Tehillim. She and her husband were zocheh to raise a family of celebrated marbitzei Torah and pillars of chessed in Klal Yisrael.

The levayah was held last Friday at Bais Yaakov High School in Boro Park and continued to Eretz Yisrael for kevurah.

She is survived by her sons, Rabbi Moshe Hellman, Harav Yitzchok Hellman and Rabbi Mordechai Hellman; daughters Rebbetzin Nechie Scheinberg, Mrs. Nechama Silverman, Mrs. Fraidy Spiegel, Mrs. Esther Gradon and Mrs. Elky Brisman; as well as by many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Yehi zichrah baruch.

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